let it be good
by Younger Dr. Grey
Summary: or, the time Micah asked Charley if he was an accident, and she talked about the good (and not so good) about being with basketball superstar, Davis West. pre-series Bordelon-West family feels.


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Micah once asked Charley if he was an accident. He kept his voice as steady as he could, but the red tint to his eyes belayed exactly how he felt about that train of thought. Blood rushed to her face, her jaw locked, and she was sure that the whole of the world caught on fire in the moment that she pinpointed how they'd gotten to this question.

Every few years or so, whenever things started going too well for Davis and Charley, this old article resurfaced from way back in the day. Before Davis even had his first ring, before her MBA, before their son really existed at all. This short blurb of a piece that Nova wrote after Christmas for her school paper, about the pressure placed on black women to be and do everything and how that pressure needed to be lessened by everyone involved, including the women themselves. The article was meant as a love letter to Charley, an apology disguised as a late Christmas present, but it talked about how Charley had nearly broken down over dropping an ornament the day before Christmas. How her voice had gone hoarse and she'd cried so hard that her glasses had to be taken off so she could swipe at her tears better. How her phone had rang with a call from her then boyfriend, Davis, and how the sound of his name alone sent Charley into another round of sobs.

In the end, the article praised Charley's resilience and the resilience of all the black women who bear the weight of themselves, their current families, and their future families. It had called everyone to task to be there for the women in their lives, even and especially when they say that they can handle it. Nova had said, 'We might be strong, but even steel bridges need a little reinforcement every now and again.'

Normally, it got Charley a few claps on the back as someone asked how her small family unit juggled everything in their lives. But at that moment — with her eight-year-old son staring up at her over his cereal bowl — she wished it'd never existed. Wished it didn't mean she had to have this conversation with him.

"Your father and I always knew that we wanted kids," Charley said with a nod and a slip into the chair beside Micah. She needed to be level with him for this, needed him to feel like they were together and she wasn't sugarcoating for his sake. "Though, we hadn't expected to have you so soon. That's true, but that doesn't mean you were an accident, Micah. In fact, the way I see it is that you wanted to be here for as much of our lives as you could. For your daddy's first championship, for both of my graduations, and you even managed to beat our wedding."

Micah kept shaking his head though. He said, "You're just saying that. You cried when you were having me."

"I cried over a lot back then, baby. I don't know if you know this, but your mom's got a bit of a problem with giving up control." She chuckled at her own understatement, and Micah managed a laugh too. "When we had you, I was starting on my third year of college. Your daddy had just been drafted for the NBA. And everything felt a little more than unreal. Like a fairytale that we weren't even writing anymore."

The whole of the world seemed to know their story. The nationally recognized scholar and the new hope for the Gladiators, billed at the top of black love and respectability, set to reinvent the mold of what today's black family looked like. She used to read her notecards at his games. Taped her study questions to the back of posters. Then he'd come back early from away games, or quiz her from his hotel room, or just listen to the sound of her pen scratching away while they both insisted that they'd go over their minutes like this.

But living that good always made her nervous. If for nothing else than the old saying, you make plans and God laughs. It's why she kept turning Davis down every time he tried to make more specific plans for the two of them. Broad ones were fine, like him getting five championship rings and her being his manager once she's got her masters, but anything else?

She shook her head. Said, "Dad proposed to me four times before I said yes. He proposed the night of the NBA Draft, said he'd be honored to have his fiancé as his date. I told him to ask again once the fear wore out, that I wasn't going anywhere." He did ask again the next day. Said that fiancé still would've had a nicer ring to it. She laughed and said, show her the ring and they could talk. He used part of his advance to buy a ring for her, but he held off on giving it to her after that. For a few months.

Micah asked her, "And the next time?"

"The next time he proposed, we were down in St. Jo, at the end of summer. I had three weeks off between summer classes and fall classes, and he was just about to start his official pre-season training for his first year in the NBA. And he was so tired of sleeping on the couch at Daddy's place while I slept at Aunt Vi's with Nova."

Davis had complained, complained to her about how many questions Ralph Angel asked him in the middle of the night. "He pulled me aside on the, what was it, third day we were there, out to the big winding tree, and he asked, 'What's a guy got to do to get some alone time around here?'" She laughed. "I told him that alone time didn't exist until we were married, and even then, it's iffy. So he broke out the ring then, like 'You want to find out?' And I just stared and stared. Asked him, 'Are you asking me to marry you to get you off the couch?'"

Micah laughed too. "He totally was."

Charley nodded, eyes already a little far away. "Oh, he definitely was. So I said no. Again."

Micah hid his face in his shoulder for a second. "Mom, you can't just mess with him like this."

"Me! He kept proposing for all the wrong reasons, Micah. At least, that's how I saw it."

"Okay, so when did he propose next?" Micah asked.

"That Christmas," she said. But it wasn't as easy of a story to recap to their son.

That Christmas, she'd avoided his calls and messages as much as she could, and he called her on Christmas day, over and over until she answered him. He called her phone, the house phone, even Nova's cell phone a few times. And when she answered, he pleaded, Baby please, don't hang up. Don't do this. Please, talk to me. Let me come see you. What's wrong? You flew to your dad's with no warning, no discussion. Charley, baby, whatever is going on is something we can work through. Charley, please—

I'm pregnant. The words kind of tumbled out of her. Her eyes stayed glued to the tree outside the window. Davis stopped talking, and she started. I thought maybe I was overreacting, just stressed as per usual, but… I took a test. Nova held my hand like we were kids going down a goddamned slide. I — Davis, what do we do?

But he hadn't known any more than she did. Shit. That's… that's a lot, babe.

And she'd asked again. What do we do?

And he'd said, What we always do, we make it work. We've got enough money right now to stay afloat. We stick to the budget, make a tighter one, and we figure out how to do this. It might be out of order, but if anyone can do it, we can. Okay?

He waited until her breathing settled a bit before saying, This mean you'll marry me now?

She'd laughed, but at least this one wasn't about the proposal. A shot gun wedding in the south?

Would that be so bad?

Charley focused back on Micah, explained, "We'd found out about you. That's when Nova wrote that article, by the way. Same Christmas. And your daddy thought that I'd want to get back on track. Thought that if he put a ring on my finger, I'd be more okay with the change in our plans. But I wasn't. That's not about you, baby. That's about me. About being terrified that I wouldn't be enough, that I needed more time and more power, more experience before I could be everything that you all needed me to be."

Micah picked at his stumpy little nails. She reached out without thinking to stop him, and he let her. Might have even held on. "So you were just scared?"

"I had no idea how to be a mom, and I didn't want to mess you up."

He scratched one of those jagged nails against the side of her hand. "You didn't mess me up."

She grinned. "Thank you."

"Much," Micah added. His own smile doubled in size. "You didn't mess me up, much."

She shoved at the side of his head, and he laughed. "I did my best, boy."

"I know. And your best is pretty cool. I guess." He glanced around their glass house and gorgeous kitchen. "But, when did you say yes?"

"You know this part." She'd told him once. "So I'd had the roughest night of my life bringing you into this world. Just painful. Super guttural. I still have scars by the way." And Micah waved her off, so she rolled her eyes and kept going. "And your dad was right there with me. He had a game in a few hours, so he didn't have much time left with either of us. I could hardly stay awake, because you know having a kid makes you really tired. But at one point, I'm trying to feed you, and Davis just asked, 'Why won't you marry me?'"

Micah jumped in, "And you said that you would marry him when the time was right."

She nodded. "I said, 'I want us to get married for us, not for anybody out there with a camera or some checklist they have for us.' But your dad was pretty done with my excuses by then." Which might have been an understatement.

Davis got real quiet after she said that. He said, Baby, I've been trying to marry you for almost a year now. And that's just officially. I've been trying to keep you with me for about as long as I've known you.

He said, I've done twenty-three interviews about how much I love you. About the house we've been looking at and the private nanny search so you can finish your degrees while I get the second most important ring I'll ever have. Twenty three. About holding you down and telling everybody to give us the space to live and love and make mistakes. Charley, I don't care about a checklist, or a fairytale. I just want to swear before you and God, in front of Ernest and little Micah here, that I will be right by your side for as long as you'll allow me to be. And I want to call you my wife.

"He had a good speech," Charley said. "And I had a lot going on with my system, so I figured if I love this man, and I love our son, then why should anyone else's opinions matter to me? Why am I forcing our story to be something it's not? And I ran my thumb down the bridge of his nose, just like this—" from right below the eyes and down to the tip of the nose "—and I said… 'My fingers are too swollen for a ring right now.'"

"Mom!"

"'But yes. Yes, I'll marry you.'"

Micah cheered and shook her until she came all the way back to this moment with him. "You know you've got more than a little problem with control."

She shrugged. "I'll work on it."

"Really?"

She tapped his nose. "Nope. Now, come on, let's call Auntie Nova and tell her how bad her article scared you. Guilt her into some really nice presents this year."

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End file.
